Will an on-campus football stadium at CSU help the school's academic mission? Yes

Build it and donors will come

As a Colorado State University alumnus, donor and season-ticket holder, I have no doubt that an on-campus stadium is vital to advancing the academic mission of CSU.

For too long there has been what can only be described as a detachment between the university and its bond with alumni and students.

This stadium is not being paid for on the backs of taxpayers or students. It's coming from athletic donors (not academic) who understand the way forward is to put CSU back on the map. Nothing does this better than being relevant in a multibillion-dollar industry viewed by tens of millions weekly.

CSU academics risks the crippling effects of government cutbacks in education. Fund-raising professionals know that the easiest way to get private donations is to ask someone who has a strong bond with the program. A stadium that brings fans and potential new donors on-campus to experience the magnificence of CSU builds these bonds.

Just since the announcement of the stadium idea, disconnected fans are beginning to care about CSU again. If you don't believe me, listen to Bob Kustra, president of Boise State University:

"What we've found at Boise State is that we've been able to leverage the football team's success by bringing up the quality of everything from the faculty to the students to the programming.

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"But I'm looking at this just from the standpoint of the marketing that you can do with (college athletics) because we do live in a world where the evening news, local news at 10 o'clock will have more about sports than anything else going on around the world and in the community. When we've reached that point, we're crazy if we don't figure out a way to get into the psyche of those folks who think that way and help us take a look at the research, help us take a look at the programming, the Ph.Ds, the masters degrees, the quality of the undergraduate degrees. Before you know it, you're selling the whole university. That's the formula as far as I'm concerned that makes football all worth the investment.

"Colorado State, by the way, is a land-grant university. We're not.

"Secondly, your research is about two and a half times ours. You've got way more graduate programming than we do. So, when it comes to academic credibility, you're a heck of a lot further along on the trajectory than we are. So, all you have to do is build the kind of buzz about the university through its football program that we have and, shoot, you guys will be looking down at the University of Colorado in the next few years."

Kustra talks more about how investing in athletics and building this stadium will advance CSU and I encourage you to read the entire interview at http://dpo.st/MZzRJq.

The most important point I can make, though, is that the fans who are supporting this stadium initiative want to see CSU excellence across the board. We are the diehard CSU supporters and understand Hughes Stadium is hurting the potential of CSU and Fort Collins. We want to provide the ability for athletics to advance the university. Without this stadium, we can't do that.

This stadium creates opportunities to make CSU better. Baylor, Oklahoma State, Texas Christian, Boise State and the University of Central Florida are all institutions investing in athletics and thriving from it. Their academics are benefiting as well. Their university missions are advancing.

On the BeBoldCSU.org website, members have identified more than a dozen articles and studies showing the effect that stadiums and investing in athletics have had on improving the quality and quantity of student applications as well as improving the quality of education that universities are able to provide students.

It's time to stop settling for mediocrity and being afraid to make CSU great. Let's be excellent — that is the mission.

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